New Christian Right Gaining Influence

This Central Florida Watchdog Of Morality Is Fighting Battles In Education And The Arts, But Its Fiercest Foe Is Abortion.

December 15, 1991|By Adelle M. Banks Of The Sentinel Staff

All the commotion about an Orlando art exhibit with crucifixes and nudes started in a cramped, tucked-away office. Here, too, ''report cards'' grade the morality of political candidates. The slogan here is, ''Giving Christians a Voice in Their Government Again.''

The two-room Orlando office of the Christian Coalition of Florida has little more than a staff of three and as many computers. Despite its size, it has a mammoth mission: It wants to influence everything from what people can see in art museums to what schools can teach children about sex.

Those computers connect the 2-year-old chapter of the coalition, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson, with a mailing list of 87,000 Florida households - conservative Christians who will write letters and make telephone calls to oppose abortion and support what they call ''family values.''

The coalition is part of a movement that is emerging with a high profile in Central Florida and trying to redefine the role that religion plays in the community.

Religion scholars estimate that the movement they call the New Christian Right may include as much as 20 percent of the nation's population. Belonging to many denominations, its proponents share several characteristics: They oppose abortion, pornography and homosexuality; interpret the Bible literally; and try to influence - with some success - the moral values of many Americans.

''You're not supposed to hide the light under a bushel,'' said Christian Coalition supporter George Crossley, referring to a verse in the Gospels. ''There isn't any way in God's green Earth that you can stay out of being involved in these issues.''

The national movement of politically active conservative Christians started more than a decade ago, but in this region the movement became more vocal in the past few years, when supporters of Robertson started to meet each other.

When televangelist Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, the movement's catalyst, dissolved two years ago, local and state groups picked up where it left off - keeping alive the sentiment that religion and politics could be mixed to keep conservative values in America's limelight.

These self-appointed watchdogs of the nation's morality are capturing the attention of government officials and politicians and generating the ire of those who don't want a single morality guiding the entire community.

Getting more organized

As Central Florida's population grows, Christian Coalition members and other conservative Christians are getting more organized. Their strategy is to get out of the church pews and be near school board meetings, city halls and abortion-clinic doors. In Central Florida their targets include:

- Art they consider pornographic or sacrilegious. In March, a barrage of letters filled Valencia Community College's mailboxes as Christian Coalition members and others opposed an exhibit there that included both crosses and nudes. In 1988, an avalanche of letters was mailed to protest The Last Temptation of Christ, a movie in which Christ dreams of marriage and sex. The film never showed in commercial theaters in Orlando, mainly because of the protests.

- Pornography. Members of the Greater Orlando Coalition Against Pornography and Volusia County State Attorney John Tanner have initiated crackdowns on video stores. After receiving complaints from conservative Christians, Orlando's Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation took X-rated movies to an Orange County grand jury, which declined to declare them obscene.

- Sex education. Seminole County school officials rejected one sex-education textbook, which coalition members considered too sexually graphic, and revised their curriculum this fall, partially to satisfy conservative Christians.

''They often don't win, but they often change the agenda and shift the flow of things a little bit and some day may do better than that,'' said Sam Hill, a religion professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville who has studied the group.

Group's success limited

The New Christian Right is seeing only limited success as it gains prominence in Central Florida:

- The anti-abortion platform of former Gov. Bob Martinez failed to get him re-elected in 1990. Thousands may protest abortion, but clinics remain open while opinion polls show that a majority of the nation supports the right to legal abortion.

- Against the objections of some conservative Christians, the cross atop the city of St. Cloud's water tower came down last year after the American Civil Liberties Union successfully argued that it violated church-state separation.